Barbados Sugar Cane

Barbados has been well know for it’s sugar and rum for literally hundreds of years. Crop is about to begin so I thought it would be a good time to talk about the plant from which these things come, sugar cane.

Sugar cane is a member of the grass family, a very tall and robust species of grass, and it is the stalks that are crushed between heavy rollers to produce sugar cane juice, which is then boiled down to produce sugar and molasses. Molasses is made into rum, and is a great addition to things like banana bread and coconut sugar cakes.

The sugar cane is cut at the base by a harvester (only that growing on steeper slopes is harvested by hand nowadays), and a tractor-drawn cart drives alongside the harvester to collect the cane stalks that are automatically cut into two foot lengths. The leaves (or trash) fall to the ground where they remain unless the field is being ploughed.

The sugar cane plants put out long feathery flower stalks late in the year, at which point the cane plants are “ripe”, however, they are not harvested until several months later as they are given time to mature and the stalks to fatten with more juice.

The sugar cane harvest in Barbados lasts for a period of three to four months, during which time much of the island is denuded of the rolling green fields of cane. At the moment there is one working sugar factory on the island, Portvale Sugar Factory, and there are plans for a second (Andrews) to be renovated and converted into a multi-purpose factory for processing the entire sugar cane plant including all the bi-products that presently go to waste.

If you would like to read more about Barbados, please visit my other blog, Things Barbados.